The Little Boy From the Sea
by Flyting
Summary: Christine's reunion with the little boy who went into the sea to rescue her scarf. Or: some bittersweet, Halloween-themed, Leroux-based R/C angst.


The opera house was haunted.

You could ask anyone, from the box-keepers, to the firemen, to the wardrobe girls, and they would tell you it was true. The ghost, they all agreed, was a man in evening dress. The ballet girls would tell you that he was often seen wandering the back west stairway, near the grand tier boxes, just before closing, or else standing alone in the _Foyer de la danse_ , as if waiting for someone.

Few of them minded his presence. He was, by all accounts, a quiet, amiable spirit, who never harmed a soul.

But on the night of the gala, no one was thinking of the ghost. All thoughts were on the young soprano Christine _**Daaé**_ , who gone on in place of La Carlotta at the last moment and astounded the house with her incandescent performance in the prison scene from Faust, before collapsing in a dead faint in front of the audience whose hearts she had so recently captured. Her name was being passed on by eager voices all the way to the streets outside, even as she herself was carried to her dressing room and lain on the couch there to recover.

Cast-mates, admirers, and well-wishers crowd into the room behind her, jostling amongst themselves in the hallway, each of them eager to be the first one to congratulate Christine _**Daaé**_ when she awakes.

Meg and Jammes, the youngest of the ballet girls, rush to join the throng, slipping around a handsome, well-dressed young man who is leaning, as if awe-struck, against the wall outside Miss Daaé's dressing room. "She's never sung like that before," they hear him exclaim, breathlessly, as they pass. But in such a crush of people, yet another fine-featured nobleman's son is largely unremarkable.

Every young man in the audience tonight will have Christine Daaé's face on his mind. The girls can only hope and dream of the day, hopefully not too long into the future, when it will be their turn and their triumph. In the meantime, they fight and elbow their way through the crowd, giggling between themselves as they slip right under the arm of some aging businessman, until they find themselves right at her dressing room door-

Which is unceremoniously shut in their faces as the house doctor forces out the bulk of the seething crowd. "Enough! Give the girl some space!" he calls. Just before the door closes, Jammes catches the briefest of glimpses inside- Christine _**Daaé**_ , recumbent on the couch, still clad in the flowing white robe she had worn as Marguerite. Her eyes are just beginning to flutter open. Around her, a handful of ardent well-wishers, including, Jammes recognizes, the awe-struck young man they had only just passed in the hall.

The first thing Christine becomes aware of as she wakes is a pair of blue eyes- the same soft, gray-blue of ocean waves where they crash against the rocks along the Breton coast. 

The last thing she remembers is the sharp cut of the conductor's hand as he cued her to begin the prison trio in Faust, and then… She needs to speak to her Angel.

She shifts, sensation slowly returning to her fingers and toes, and slowly realizes that she is lying on the couch in her dressing room. She is distantly aware of the house doctor taking her pulse. There is a dull roaring outside, like a distant tide, and for a moment she is afraid that the sea has come to swallow her up.

The eyes, she realizes as reason returns, belong to a fair-haired young man, who is kneeling beside the divan. His face is familiar, though Christine doesn't know his name. She has seen him before, around the opera; sometimes sitting in the Comte de Chagny's box, or else in the foyer outside the dressing rooms with all the other lovesick young men who wait upon the ballerinas after a performance.

He had spoken to her just once, Christine remembers. She had been leaving her dressing room to return home. "Mademoiselle," he had called out, nervously, and she had at first assumed he must be talking to someone else. It was only when he said, "Mademoiselle _**Daaé**_?" in that same quiet voice that she turned.

"Yes?" she had said, uncertain as to why so well-dressed a young man might be speaking to her. She even remembers looking around, having thought that perhaps she had dropped a handkerchief and he was merely drawing her attention to the loss.

"I just wanted to tell you that you sounded wonderful tonight," he had said, eyes bright with earnest enthusiasm, and smiled at her. She was quite certain that she had blushed, thanking him.

He gives her that same sweet, shy smile now as recognition crosses her face. He lifts her hand, cradling it in his own, and presses the most decorous of kisses to her knuckles. "Are you feeling better now, mademoiselle?" he asks.

"Yes, I believe so," she says, glancing from the young man to the doctor, who was hovering keenly behind her, and back. "But, monsieur… who are you?"

His boyish face seems to fall just a little. "Mademoiselle, don't you remember me?" he asks.

Christine shakes her head.

"I am the little boy who went into the sea to fetch your scarf."

Those few others who were in the room would later attest to how Christine Daaé's rosy face turned ash-white at this remark, as if she had seen a ghost.

She lifts her hand from his, numbly. If the boy had reached out and struck her, it might have shocked her less. "Whoever you are," she says, in a cold whisper, "I find your jokes in very poor taste."

Christine turns away, unable to look at him anymore. Her breath trembles. as though fighting back tears, or perhaps fury.

In the periphery of the room, some of her fellow-singers, who until now had assumed that the young man who spoken so confidently and placed himself so prominently in her room had some right to be there, stirred. They edge closer to him, preparing to eject the unwelcome intruder should Mademoiselle _**Daaé**_ request it.

"Mademoiselle," the young man says urgently, sounding close to tears, "Surely you must remember. Your scarf was red. The wind picked it up and carried it far out to sea, and you wept! I couldn't bear to see your tears, so I _-"_

" _Enough_." Christine stops him. Her eyes pinch shut, and the hand that had so recently been graced with a kiss flew up to cover her mouth. "Please leave, monsieur."

The young man stands, obediently, before her self-styled defenders can lay their hands on his shoulders to remove him. "As you wish, mademoiselle. …I'm very sorry to have upset you," he offers quietly, as a parting gift. As they divided to make room for him to leave, those closest to the door might have noticed the glint of unshed tears in his eyes. Then the young man was gone, vanishing into the thinning crowd outside the door. Just another shadow of a man in evening dress.

"Thank you all." Christine says once he's gone, scrubbing at her eyes with one hand. She attempts a cheerful tone, though the whole of her heart isn't in it "Thank you for your concern. But please, I would like to be alone."

"Are you sure, mademoiselle?" asks one of her fellow singers. It was the famous basso profundo who had sung Mephistopheles alongside her during that resplendent Faust trio, and who had carried her in his arms back to the dressing room after her collapse.

"Yes. Please, leave me."

They file out, one-by-one offering platitudes and congratulations, and Christine is left alone in the room. Only then does she allow the tears to fall.

They slip down her cheeks, warm and tasting of salt, and the bitter tang of salt-water only makes her gasp and weep harder, until she is shaking with the force of her sobs. She wraps both arms around herself, and a little part of her longs, more than anything in that moment, for the comforting voice of her Angel to help soothe away her pain.

She will be angry, she knows, once the sting of memory has passed. _How dare he-_ how dare that arrogant young boy presume to speak to her of _that_. And to claim that _he_ was the boy who had followed her scarf into the sea that day-

Christine still had nightmares about the ocean.

She still saw that little boy's face as he rushed past her, golden hair gleaming in the sun.

" _Don't cry, mademoiselle!"_ he had shouted, wading into the surf with a grin. _"I'll fetch it for you!"_

The wind had dragged her scarf far out to sea, but he pursued it doggedly, swimming with practiced, powerful strokes. When he finally reached it, he had held the soggy thing up above the waves, panting and waving it like a knight's banner. Innocent child that she was, she had applauded.

Then the undertow had hit.

In her dreams, she still saw the look of surprise on his face as it dragged him down under the water. She saw the waves lapping over his head, pushing him further and further from shore. She saw him, already exhausted from his pursuit of her scarf, but fighting with all his strength to stay above the water as the waves pummeled him mercilessly and she screamed for help that never came, helpless to do anything but watch as the golden-haired boy slipped under the water for longer and longer periods, and then finally never came back up again.

Christine had never even known his name.

When the police had finally pulled the boy's body, limp and broken by the surf, back to shore, he still had her red scarf clutched in one hand.

Much later that night, when the opera house is quiet and dark, and even the cleaners have long since gone home, a fair-haired young man in evening dress wanders the halls alone. His footsteps make no sound as he crosses the polished marble floors of the grand foyer and out onto the staircase, where he sits upon the topmost step.

For the longest time he simply sits there, alone and unseen; his arms resting on his knees and head hung as if deep in thought. When he finally does move, it is only to reach one hand unthinkingly into his jacket. He pulls from its reaches a long red scarf, running the worn and battered material gently through his hands, and sighs. 


End file.
